Lucas has pretty much dug his own grave when it comes to the SW franchise - I think early on it was his ego demanding "bigger/better/faster/more" which produced some truly good movie moments.
But then the terms for 'success' shifted from making 'good' films to making 'profitable' films. I think he knew that marketing would have to take a more important role in his decisions for the newer films in order for them to be considered more'successful' than its predecessor. As Ep1 and 2 showed, the marketing Lucas overtook the filmmaker Lucas. It's like he's his own Darth Vader - succumbing to the Dark Side where dollars are king.
Unfortunately, when you're George Lucas, your ego tells you that anything you decide must be the right thing. How could he go wrong?...he's George Lucas! He did Star Wars! That being the case, I think Ep3 will be the train wreck many of us expect.
I skipped seeing Ep2 in the theater, and will do the same for 3. I felt with the original trilogy there was a reason to go see these films on the big screen, but now I see more reasons to wait until it's rentable a few months after being released to DVD.
Remember that to get GNU/Linux to act like Windows, the GNOME and KDE teams have actually had to do a lot of work underneath to duplicate redundant Windows functionality, from creating somewhat multiple redundant* object frameworks to the "It's better than the Registry, honest!" GConf system.
But that makes it sound like both teams tried to duplicate MS' way of doing things rather than keeping Linux' approach and making the result _look_ like Windows. I agree - trying to cripple the Linux kernel to make it duplicate Windows methodology is not what's needed.
I am curious about the hacks you mentioned, specifically what the thought process by both teams were when building GNOME and KDE, and what other approaches they discarded in favor of these. If you know of any specific links, they'd be greatly appreciated. Should make for some interesting reading!
I love music, and used to spend a lot on buying new CDs before this RIAA shakedown started. Stories like this, however, have made me change my ways, and now I buy exactly $0's worth from any label that supports the RIAA.
It's appalling to think that this is all done defending artists from file sharers when their watchdog is either this clueless or dishonest...with the RIAA, it's hard to tell which.
Artists might fare better if they could see an alternative to this corporate mire. Perhaps if they understood that consumers would be more supportive of the music if there was some reasonable guarantee that money would actually get to the artist rather than a conglomerate?
Granted I have no guarantee of that withmycurrent label selections, but I feel better knowing that my cash isn't feeding the anti-piracy machine.
Why not have both? As a PM, I usually hammer out the Client Spec with the customer (high-level descriptions, spelling out deadlines and estimates - mostly contractual in nature), then write a Tech Spec (specific language, acceptance testing, use cases) for the programming team based on that. Having a formally spelled-out agreement with the client heads off a lot of trouble, and the Tech Spec helps the team understand the scope of the project.
As for the professor who claims specs are the enemy of design, I'd have to agree with those who wrote that he probably has limited experience in the actual SD field, if any. Sad that he's passing off such broad generalizations as knowledge...sadder still that (a) his students believe him, and (b) paid for the privilege.
Well, I can't claim it as *my* logic, but the assumption the creators of Superman wanted readers to make (I think) would be that if Kal-El came from a red-sun world, traveled to a yellow-sun world and became invulnerable to harm, then any inanimate objects native to the red-sun world would inherit those properties, too.
I don't think the authors of Superman's origins really took into account much by way of science when they thought about it, but you could extrapolate:
1) If Superman's Suit is Made of Organics
If you think about the plant material growing on the bottom of our own oceans where pressures are great and light is almost completely absent, those plants have evolved to overcome their environment of near-zero light and several hundred atmospheres.
Along those lines, if Superman's suit were constructed of organic material from a world where the sun was dimmer/cooler, the plant material may have evolved to exist in a much more hostile environment (colder, less light), and to us seem indestructible.
or
2) If Superman's Suit is Inorganic/Fabricated
If Superman's suit were a result of Krypton's higher level of technology, it may have been designed to protect him much the same as a Kevlar vest would be for law enforcement. Granted, something that is more dense than diamond and can still be folded/cut/sewn doesn't sound like it'd be all that comfy to wear.
Just two quick stabs at it. It's all comic book logic, true, but I think this instructor has come up with a novel idea to teach physics. I'd love to sit in on his class.
In the original Superman, didn't Ma Kent make Kal-El's first clothes out of cloth from the interior of the ship that brought the baby to Earth? I always thought the cloth itself, coming from Krypton's red sun atmosphere, would be less impervious to damage in Earth's yellow sun environment.
The Byrne explanation was a little too "plucked out of thin air". Sometimes the best explanations are the simple ones.
...if I were a major software company that had a new product I wanted to push companies to buy instead of an old software product that they cling to, "leaking" sourcecode of the "old" product that could potentially show its security flaws would certainly work in my favor. Not to say that that's actually happened, but that was among the first theories I came up with after doing some reading this week.
After reading Jones' opinion piece, his assertions don't add up, either for governments or companies contemplating open source products. Being able to see exactly what you're buying/getting before deployment makes a lot more sense than a welded-hood approach. If trust is an issue, I think you'd have an easier time getting your questions answered with an open source development group than having to navigate a Sales/Marketing monolith.
I attended Auburn University, which has one campus-run bookstore and two off-campus bookstores. One afternoon in an Econ class, we were challenged for extra credit to find out how much profit was made on our textbook over its lifetime, so a few of us set out to see.
Factors we took into consideration were (among others): purchase price with volume pricing (we had an insider), how many times a book could be resold until it became unusable or was obsolete (around six-eight consecutive quarters, thanks to the publishers), and how much money was offered to students when books were sold back based on its condition.
The numbers floored our instructor. A book which cost the bookstore US$90 initially made around 480% profit over its lifetime. What that told me is that the publishers may be making a pot of money off students, but the "local booksellers" are also profiting pretty shamelessly.
Not exactly. Word order is a convention in German, but has little/no bearing on the meaning. For that, German changes the article, noun and its modifiers. Quite the opposite from English where syntax/word order weigh heavily on the meaning of the sentence, but the words themselves don't change.
"Man bites dog" in English depends on word order to tell who the victim is - in German, you can say "Der Mann bisst den Hund" or "Den Hund bisst der Mann", and they actually mean the same thing (although few Germans would say the latter).
For me, case sensitivity gives coders better visual cues when they deal with hundreds of variables. TimeoutStringStart is much easier to read than timeoutstringstart or TIMEOUTSTRINGSTART. My philosophy on this is, if it's easier to read, it's easier to debug.
As others have posted, this can be a very tricky situation to be placed in. My old company had something similar for a few non-IS departments, and it resulted in "restructuring" whereby the ones who raised issues were "restructured" out of their jobs.
My advice would be to place the ball firmly in the CXXs' courts. If the corporate-level people are committed to change, digging out the worst problems and solving them, they shouldn't balk at the suggestion that this be an ongoing arrangement.
In other words, if someone were to stand up at this meeting and say, "Hey, I think this is a great opportunity to solve some issues that impede our progress. Will there be some way for us to get you suggestions beyond this meeting?"
If the Cxx answers, "No, this is pretty much how we want to handle it - one meeting," I'd say their motives aren't what they want you to believe they are. If they like the suggestion, however, and suggest that there could be some informal gathering or way of identifying such issues, I'd be more trusting of their motives.
Just don't allow them to leave it at a "planned" stage without followthrough. Ask for specific dates, times, etc., to identify responsible parties, and ask how these sessions will be structured.
When the second or the third such meeting rolls around, and it looks like things are getting attention and respect, *then* I'd feel better about speaking up.
And how, oh insightful AC, would a newcomer *know* that's where to find it? A newcomer does indeed "...have a lot more to learn..." - that's usually why they're called 'newcomers'.
OS creators, though, can make the new user a _loyal_ user by helping them easily fix mistakes they will inevitably make as they learn, hence my suggestion.
That depends on your point of view. Although what the original post described as "irreversible" isn't, there isn't an "undo" that returns that app to the dock. You _can_ find the app, and re-establish it on the desktop as you describe, but to a user unused to finding their way around folders, it's not _easily_ fixed.
Consider the three things a user is most likely to do on a desktop of nearly any flavor: double-click (start an app on the desktop), single-click (start an app on the dock), and click-n-drag (trash something or simply relocate an icon). Clicking/dragging is exactly what the original post describes to remove something from the dock - I've seen users do this when learning the new OS, so I'd have to take issue that it's "...not an easy mistake to make...".
A wiser approach would be to keep the entire desktop in a saved state like that of a word processor doc. I can underline something, then hit "undo", and it returns to the way it was in the word processor...why not include something like that for the desktop as well?
Granted, powerusers won't get a lot of mileage out of such a thing, but others might find it a worthwile failsafe.
Frankly, I see the tone of the article (and here in the comments) showing a misunderstanding of the process of building software. Coders don't have a lower skillset, they have a different skillset - the same goes for PMs/Managers.
Working primarily as a Project Manager/Analyst, my skills focus on the big picture stuff: deadlines, requirements gathering, task integration and problem solving on the human side. Coders, though, work with a different view: algorithms, flow, architecture, interoperability and problem solving on the technological side.
The tone here seems to focus on "who's expendable?" whereas I can't see that either is. Companies may see some logic in sending coding overseas to save money, and in some cases they might be right. In my opinion, though, overseas coding is rife with issues some of these businesspeople haven't yet discovered or factored in (language/interpretation, differing standards, differing cultural concepts of time, telecommunication issues, post-project maintenance costs/difficulties being but a few).
It reminds me of the discussion between Brian and Bender in The Breakfast Club:
Brian: I'm a fucking idiot because I can't make a lamp? Bender: No. You're a genius because you can't make a lamp. Brian: What do you know about trigonometry? Bender: I could care less about trigonometry. Brian: Bender, did you know without trigonometry there would be no engineering? Bender: Without lamps there'd be no light.
I dunno. While I have no issue with Stallman's ideals or his ingenuity, he can come across not only as "a wacko", but an *arrogant* wacko at times. To a judge hearing the case, Stallman's _facts_ (should he be called) may indeed support the GPL, but any hint of condescension in his _delivery_ could turn opinion against IBM. I think Moglen will have his hands full, as will the IBM lawyers.
It's not so much that online sites aren't biased, it's that online readers can go to a LOT more of them quickly to read news from a variety of sources. Personally I hate sitting in front of the TV for hours waiting to be spoon-fed news according to someone else's set of priorities - but within minutes of reading a story on one site, I can visit half a dozen other sources (all with their own biases), and get a better grasp of the issue.
Your post shows that your English is not perfect either. E.g. you use certain latin abbreviations incorrectly.:) Anyway, if blunte understood me just fine, why didn't he address my post, but instead simply repeated his original position?
Wow, angry/defensive much? I never claimed that my English was perfect, but your incorrect correction kinda makes my point. As for why blunte didn't address your post, ask him/her. If it was me, I wouldn't have replied because you seemed more intent on venting than earnest discourse, but, hey, that's just me.
You seem to agree that "languages are organic", but you don't really understand what it means. Rules are not set by the scholars for others to follow. Rules are formulated in order to codify the consensus of language users.
On the contrary, I do understand what 'organic' means in this sense. What I wrote was that "organic" doesn't equate to "anarchic" (even in organic structures there are rules, even if we don't understand/can't see them). People are free to ignore all the rules they want, and, as I said, can suffer at being misunderstood as a consequence. We all lose a bit in that, though - you may have a great idea to get across, but that idea gets lost in your poor telling of it. The rules are convention, I agree - but sometimes the convention serves a genuine purpose (i.e., clear(er) communication).
People mix up 'then' and 'than' not because they don't know the difference between the two concepts, but simply because they forget which concept has which letter.
Hmm...well, the only difference visually between + and - seems to be a vertical line, but people have that one nailed down pretty well past the second grade usually. People don't often confuse the two - you have to ask yourself why that is. Perhaps it's poor teaching, which happens. Perhaps it's people not paying attention in class when "then" and "than" are taught, though, too. It comes down to near the same thing - if you dedicate the neural pathways to it, you'll remember it and use it properly.
Do you want me to IM you every time you fuck up and ridicule you?
Is that what happens to you? Poor thing...it must happen with alarming frequency by your tone.:)
If you don't like how others speak, STFU or GTFOOH. It is simply extremely impolite, sort of Internet way of saying "you momma is a bitch" or "you freak".
Pointing out an error in a polite way isn't the same as namecalling, sorry. If you think the posts preceding mine were impolite, then you're in for a bit of a shock when you leave your Mom's basement for the first time.
People speak the way they do. Especially when they actually type. Moreso when they do it for a quick/. post. And particularly when English is not their first language, like in my case.
Strange as it may seem, some people actually speak and type the same way. I do, for one - whether it be in English, German or Italian. I was taught that if you want people to understand you, it's up to *you* to make the effort, not your audience. I still make mistakes in all three languages, but the difference between us is that I try to learn the conventional, educated way of speaking so I can learn more than just grammar rules.
In my country, when a foreigner makes a mistake we do not tell him "Learn to spell, you idiot". Instead we ignore the error, because we know that practice and comfort are more important than pointless nagging.
Germans typically don't say that, either, nor do Americans. What Germans will do, however, is use the word again in their sentence the proper way - a gentle way of pointing it out so that you can learn to speak the language better, and thus be better understood in future. I've heard Americans do this
Apparently, at two people - the clueless moderator and you - have poor reading comprehension skills.
No, they have good reading comprehension, but a low tolerance for those with poor writing skills (i.e. they were able to figure out what the message regardless of its poor delivery) Non-native speakers of a language may not be as skilled at cryptolinguistics, thus their pointing out the errors for clarification.
The moral of the story is that if you would so kindly please leave us all alone (those of us who don't know the 'correct' spelling and those of us who still do), chances are that the situation will either improve or stay the same.
Hardly - if you and others never learn the simple rules that govern your own languages, you won't teach those rules to your children, should you be so blessed, and those rules then fall by the wayside. If that should happen often enough, we might just eventually be reduced to something akin to grunts, as someone put it earlier. As Preed put it so well, "I weep for the species."
It never fails to amaze me that people able to program their little hearts out in a variety of languages (ones much stricter than most spoken languages) can't remember the difference between "then" and "than". Do you forget the difference between "+" and "-"?
Then my father started testing her all the time. Very quickly she forgot the right form and now avoids the word altogether.
Now that's an idea, if it served to discourage posting altogether.
As for the argument that "languages are organic" and "change is good", I'll agree to an extent. However, "organic" doesn't imply "anarchic". A comedian (Steve Martin?) once jokingly suggested that we teach kids the wrong meanings of words to our kids. I would never teach my daughter that "no" means "yes". Hopefully, neither would you.
If you want to get across an idea or thought, at least learn the basics or deal with forever being misunderstood.
NPR interviewed the man who does the voiceovers for movie trailers (and CNN and just about everything else). I can't help but wonder if the movie moguls just keep re-using the same 30 seconds of his voice, and tack on different movie names.
Oh, darn - there I go answering my own question again.
Re:Not very ergonomic design.
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While it's true that the monitor arm allows for adjustment, at some point in that adjustment, the screen would actually obscure part of the keyboard if it were properly ergonomic - at least that's the way it looks with both featured desks.
Better would've been to have the "pod" thingy sit lower than the keyboard, and disallowing some of the computer's range of motion to enforce good ergonomics. Frankly I've never been taken with Apple's designs - they make their products look like candy with all its good *and* bad associations, detracting from the quality of their products in some peoples' minds.
Gods forbid if you should have kids/pets running around with that standing model - they both look really unstable and flimsy. Maybe they should contact the people at Bang & Olufsen instead of Yul Ullu.
They're working REALLY REALLY hard (with all the filtering, header forging, etc.) to send mail to people that don't want it.
Sadly, they aren't working hard to send out spam - once spammers figure out a new way to defeat anti-spam methods, they can construct one email and chug out millions of messages. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It reminds me of the struggle between bacteria and antibiotics - ineffective (or non-existent) laws, poor user understanding, and overly-simple anti-spam software might contribute to highly resistant strains of spam at some point. Either that or we'll end up getting rid of spam by simply getting rid of email altogether.
How many large companies currently considering their next software purchases/upgrades will point to the now-revealed details of the Munich deal, and say to MS "We'd like the same kinds of concessions." Given that there are several companies which spend more than the Munich deal on desktop apps, it might make MS management feel a little more pressure.
I'd love to see the details of how much of the final pricetags of each company broke down into software versus training and support. Something tells me that the ratio of software licenses to training/support for each side would skew in two very different directions between MS and the Linux solution.
If I were making the decision, I'd pay close attention to that ratio (and I'm assuming Munich did). Software licenses are fairly transitory - they expire, the software needs upgrading, etc. whereas training and support seem more solid investments in the workforce and infrastructure.
My question is, will the strategy of selling to a declining population (as people leave AOL for other Internet providers) be worth it in the long run? Sure, AOL/TW can make money off their subscribers this way, but, as someone previously posted, when AOL users' anxiety over the Internet drops to the point where they look elsewhere for service, AOL/TW loses that potential sales channel completely.
I don't think AOL is going away anytime soon, but unless AOL is also going to pursue an *outside* channel of sales (one that non-AOL subscribers can get in on) as well, the strategy only makes sense in the short term. I'd guess that there's something larger in the AOL/TW works, and this announcement is the equivalent of "open beta".
It is not "preying" on customers if the "closed-source" product offers value above and beyond the cost of the product.
Maybe I didn't make it clear what was predatory about closed-source companies. What companies like MS do is create their software such that they make choices for the business by making interoperability much harder for IT departments.
A good example would be Exchange Server. If a company wants to use Outlook's calendar feature, the IT department has to choose Exchange so that calendars synch up, etc. MS benefits from both sales of Exchange Server and Outlook - while Outlook's functionality has been duplicated for the most part by companies like Ximian (Connector), the closed-source nature of Exchange Server itself makes the choice for the business.
From a business standpoint, I can understand why MS takes that tack - who wants competition when Lotus is pounding on the door. If I were a CIO of a company other than MS or IBM, though, I'd feel my choices of email/calendar server software were unfairly restricted (or at least hopelessly complicated) by that situation.
The choices are wider than that, of course, because there are OSS alternatives maturing in places like SourceForge, but conservative businesses like banks want fully-matured solutions. OSS, in my view, has a way to go before shaking off business' view of it as done by "hackers", sadly.
As for adding value, I'd offer that the OSS focus on standards is itself an added value to the duplicated software. With industry standards being set, I as a CIO could choose a Linux-based Exchange alternative, and, if I found Outlook to be my email client of choice, I could buy it. As it stands now, though, I find my company (which isn't in the software dev business) has one of three solutions: 1) buy only Microsoft, 2) buy MS and cobble together OSS solutions, working harder than I should to keep them talking or 3) go strictly OSS which has its own set of issues. As a businessperson, I'm not content with those choices.
Sorry about the Amy Wong reference - had Futurama on in the background.
After reading the article, I remembered all those times PM mentors would expound on the idea, "separate business logic from programming logic", which is essentially what O'Reilly (and others) are saying. Companies like Google, Amazon, et al. are creating proprietary "business logic" on Open Source "programming logic".
Frankly, I think this commoditization of the "programming logic" part is inevitable as businesses look for the most efficient framework in which to please customers and make money for their shareholders. Businesses are starting to wake up to some new freedoms they didn't know they had in Open Source, and the focus of the competition is shifting (rightly) to the *products* a software developer creates rather than the tools they use to create them.
Closed-source companies prey on the absence of interoperability standards, but I can't see that lasting forever - businesses will *require* more from their software dev companies from fidiuciary responsibility if anything else, not wanting to be tied to a single company for fear of out-of-control pricing.
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Lucas has pretty much dug his own grave when it comes to the SW franchise - I think early on it was his ego demanding "bigger/better/faster/more" which produced some truly good movie moments.
But then the terms for 'success' shifted from making 'good' films to making 'profitable' films. I think he knew that marketing would have to take a more important role in his decisions for the newer films in order for them to be considered more'successful' than its predecessor. As Ep1 and 2 showed, the marketing Lucas overtook the filmmaker Lucas. It's like he's his own Darth Vader - succumbing to the Dark Side where dollars are king.
Unfortunately, when you're George Lucas, your ego tells you that anything you decide must be the right thing. How could he go wrong?...he's George Lucas! He did Star Wars! That being the case, I think Ep3 will be the train wreck many of us expect.
I skipped seeing Ep2 in the theater, and will do the same for 3. I felt with the original trilogy there was a reason to go see these films on the big screen, but now I see more reasons to wait until it's rentable a few months after being released to DVD.
I am curious about the hacks you mentioned, specifically what the thought process by both teams were when building GNOME and KDE, and what other approaches they discarded in favor of these. If you know of any specific links, they'd be greatly appreciated. Should make for some interesting reading!
I love music, and used to spend a lot on buying new CDs before this RIAA shakedown started. Stories like this, however, have made me change my ways, and now I buy exactly $0's worth from any label that supports the RIAA.
It's appalling to think that this is all done defending artists from file sharers when their watchdog is either this clueless or dishonest...with the RIAA, it's hard to tell which.
Artists might fare better if they could see an alternative to this corporate mire. Perhaps if they understood that consumers would be more supportive of the music if there was some reasonable guarantee that money would actually get to the artist rather than a conglomerate?
Granted I have no guarantee of that with my current label selections, but I feel better knowing that my cash isn't feeding the anti-piracy machine.
Why not have both? As a PM, I usually hammer out the Client Spec with the customer (high-level descriptions, spelling out deadlines and estimates - mostly contractual in nature), then write a Tech Spec (specific language, acceptance testing, use cases) for the programming team based on that. Having a formally spelled-out agreement with the client heads off a lot of trouble, and the Tech Spec helps the team understand the scope of the project.
As for the professor who claims specs are the enemy of design, I'd have to agree with those who wrote that he probably has limited experience in the actual SD field, if any. Sad that he's passing off such broad generalizations as knowledge...sadder still that (a) his students believe him, and (b) paid for the privilege.
True...I had it originally as "susceptible", and changed it by mistake.
Well, I can't claim it as *my* logic, but the assumption the creators of Superman wanted readers to make (I think) would be that if Kal-El came from a red-sun world, traveled to a yellow-sun world and became invulnerable to harm, then any inanimate objects native to the red-sun world would inherit those properties, too.
I don't think the authors of Superman's origins really took into account much by way of science when they thought about it, but you could extrapolate:
1) If Superman's Suit is Made of Organics
If you think about the plant material growing on the bottom of our own oceans where pressures are great and light is almost completely absent, those plants have evolved to overcome their environment of near-zero light and several hundred atmospheres.
Along those lines, if Superman's suit were constructed of organic material from a world where the sun was dimmer/cooler, the plant material may have evolved to exist in a much more hostile environment (colder, less light), and to us seem indestructible.
or
2) If Superman's Suit is Inorganic/Fabricated
If Superman's suit were a result of Krypton's higher level of technology, it may have been designed to protect him much the same as a Kevlar vest would be for law enforcement. Granted, something that is more dense than diamond and can still be folded/cut/sewn doesn't sound like it'd be all that comfy to wear.
Just two quick stabs at it. It's all comic book logic, true, but I think this instructor has come up with a novel idea to teach physics. I'd love to sit in on his class.
In the original Superman, didn't Ma Kent make Kal-El's first clothes out of cloth from the interior of the ship that brought the baby to Earth? I always thought the cloth itself, coming from Krypton's red sun atmosphere, would be less impervious to damage in Earth's yellow sun environment.
The Byrne explanation was a little too "plucked out of thin air". Sometimes the best explanations are the simple ones.
Not one for conspiracy theories, but...
...if I were a major software company that had a new product I wanted to push companies to buy instead of an old software product that they cling to, "leaking" sourcecode of the "old" product that could potentially show its security flaws would certainly work in my favor. Not to say that that's actually happened, but that was among the first theories I came up with after doing some reading this week.
After reading Jones' opinion piece, his assertions don't add up, either for governments or companies contemplating open source products. Being able to see exactly what you're buying/getting before deployment makes a lot more sense than a welded-hood approach. If trust is an issue, I think you'd have an easier time getting your questions answered with an open source development group than having to navigate a Sales/Marketing monolith.
I attended Auburn University, which has one campus-run bookstore and two off-campus bookstores. One afternoon in an Econ class, we were challenged for extra credit to find out how much profit was made on our textbook over its lifetime, so a few of us set out to see.
Factors we took into consideration were (among others): purchase price with volume pricing (we had an insider), how many times a book could be resold until it became unusable or was obsolete (around six-eight consecutive quarters, thanks to the publishers), and how much money was offered to students when books were sold back based on its condition.
The numbers floored our instructor. A book which cost the bookstore US$90 initially made around 480% profit over its lifetime. What that told me is that the publishers may be making a pot of money off students, but the "local booksellers" are also profiting pretty shamelessly.
Not exactly. Word order is a convention in German, but has little/no bearing on the meaning. For that, German changes the article, noun and its modifiers. Quite the opposite from English where syntax/word order weigh heavily on the meaning of the sentence, but the words themselves don't change.
"Man bites dog" in English depends on word order to tell who the victim is - in German, you can say "Der Mann bisst den Hund" or "Den Hund bisst der Mann", and they actually mean the same thing (although few Germans would say the latter).
For me, case sensitivity gives coders better visual cues when they deal with hundreds of variables. TimeoutStringStart is much easier to read than timeoutstringstart or TIMEOUTSTRINGSTART. My philosophy on this is, if it's easier to read, it's easier to debug.
As others have posted, this can be a very tricky situation to be placed in. My old company had something similar for a few non-IS departments, and it resulted in "restructuring" whereby the ones who raised issues were "restructured" out of their jobs.
My advice would be to place the ball firmly in the CXXs' courts. If the corporate-level people are committed to change, digging out the worst problems and solving them, they shouldn't balk at the suggestion that this be an ongoing arrangement.
In other words, if someone were to stand up at this meeting and say, "Hey, I think this is a great opportunity to solve some issues that impede our progress. Will there be some way for us to get you suggestions beyond this meeting?"
If the Cxx answers, "No, this is pretty much how we want to handle it - one meeting," I'd say their motives aren't what they want you to believe they are. If they like the suggestion, however, and suggest that there could be some informal gathering or way of identifying such issues, I'd be more trusting of their motives.
Just don't allow them to leave it at a "planned" stage without followthrough. Ask for specific dates, times, etc., to identify responsible parties, and ask how these sessions will be structured.
When the second or the third such meeting rolls around, and it looks like things are getting attention and respect, *then* I'd feel better about speaking up.
And how, oh insightful AC, would a newcomer *know* that's where to find it? A newcomer does indeed "...have a lot more to learn..." - that's usually why they're called 'newcomers'.
OS creators, though, can make the new user a _loyal_ user by helping them easily fix mistakes they will inevitably make as they learn, hence my suggestion.
That depends on your point of view. Although what the original post described as "irreversible" isn't, there isn't an "undo" that returns that app to the dock. You _can_ find the app, and re-establish it on the desktop as you describe, but to a user unused to finding their way around folders, it's not _easily_ fixed.
Consider the three things a user is most likely to do on a desktop of nearly any flavor: double-click (start an app on the desktop), single-click (start an app on the dock), and click-n-drag (trash something or simply relocate an icon). Clicking/dragging is exactly what the original post describes to remove something from the dock - I've seen users do this when learning the new OS, so I'd have to take issue that it's "...not an easy mistake to make...".
A wiser approach would be to keep the entire desktop in a saved state like that of a word processor doc. I can underline something, then hit "undo", and it returns to the way it was in the word processor...why not include something like that for the desktop as well?
Granted, powerusers won't get a lot of mileage out of such a thing, but others might find it a worthwile failsafe.
Working primarily as a Project Manager/Analyst, my skills focus on the big picture stuff: deadlines, requirements gathering, task integration and problem solving on the human side. Coders, though, work with a different view: algorithms, flow, architecture, interoperability and problem solving on the technological side.
The tone here seems to focus on "who's expendable?" whereas I can't see that either is. Companies may see some logic in sending coding overseas to save money, and in some cases they might be right. In my opinion, though, overseas coding is rife with issues some of these businesspeople haven't yet discovered or factored in (language/interpretation, differing standards, differing cultural concepts of time, telecommunication issues, post-project maintenance costs/difficulties being but a few).
It reminds me of the discussion between Brian and Bender in The Breakfast Club:
I dunno. While I have no issue with Stallman's ideals or his ingenuity, he can come across not only as "a wacko", but an *arrogant* wacko at times. To a judge hearing the case, Stallman's _facts_ (should he be called) may indeed support the GPL, but any hint of condescension in his _delivery_ could turn opinion against IBM. I think Moglen will have his hands full, as will the IBM lawyers.
It's not so much that online sites aren't biased, it's that online readers can go to a LOT more of them quickly to read news from a variety of sources. Personally I hate sitting in front of the TV for hours waiting to be spoon-fed news according to someone else's set of priorities - but within minutes of reading a story on one site, I can visit half a dozen other sources (all with their own biases), and get a better grasp of the issue.
Wow, angry/defensive much? I never claimed that my English was perfect, but your incorrect correction kinda makes my point. As for why blunte didn't address your post, ask him/her. If it was me, I wouldn't have replied because you seemed more intent on venting than earnest discourse, but, hey, that's just me.
On the contrary, I do understand what 'organic' means in this sense. What I wrote was that "organic" doesn't equate to "anarchic" (even in organic structures there are rules, even if we don't understand/can't see them). People are free to ignore all the rules they want, and, as I said, can suffer at being misunderstood as a consequence. We all lose a bit in that, though - you may have a great idea to get across, but that idea gets lost in your poor telling of it. The rules are convention, I agree - but sometimes the convention serves a genuine purpose (i.e., clear(er) communication).
Hmm...well, the only difference visually between + and - seems to be a vertical line, but people have that one nailed down pretty well past the second grade usually. People don't often confuse the two - you have to ask yourself why that is. Perhaps it's poor teaching, which happens. Perhaps it's people not paying attention in class when "then" and "than" are taught, though, too. It comes down to near the same thing - if you dedicate the neural pathways to it, you'll remember it and use it properly.
Is that what happens to you? Poor thing...it must happen with alarming frequency by your tone. :)
Pointing out an error in a polite way isn't the same as namecalling, sorry. If you think the posts preceding mine were impolite, then you're in for a bit of a shock when you leave your Mom's basement for the first time.
Strange as it may seem, some people actually speak and type the same way. I do, for one - whether it be in English, German or Italian. I was taught that if you want people to understand you, it's up to *you* to make the effort, not your audience. I still make mistakes in all three languages, but the difference between us is that I try to learn the conventional, educated way of speaking so I can learn more than just grammar rules.
Germans typically don't say that, either, nor do Americans. What Germans will do, however, is use the word again in their sentence the proper way - a gentle way of pointing it out so that you can learn to speak the language better, and thus be better understood in future. I've heard Americans do this
It never fails to amaze me that people able to program their little hearts out in a variety of languages (ones much stricter than most spoken languages) can't remember the difference between "then" and "than". Do you forget the difference between "+" and "-"?
Now that's an idea, if it served to discourage posting altogether.As for the argument that "languages are organic" and "change is good", I'll agree to an extent. However, "organic" doesn't imply "anarchic". A comedian (Steve Martin?) once jokingly suggested that we teach kids the wrong meanings of words to our kids. I would never teach my daughter that "no" means "yes". Hopefully, neither would you.
If you want to get across an idea or thought, at least learn the basics or deal with forever being misunderstood.
"...where nothing is as it seems..."
NPR interviewed the man who does the voiceovers for movie trailers (and CNN and just about everything else). I can't help but wonder if the movie moguls just keep re-using the same 30 seconds of his voice, and tack on different movie names.
Oh, darn - there I go answering my own question again.
While it's true that the monitor arm allows for adjustment, at some point in that adjustment, the screen would actually obscure part of the keyboard if it were properly ergonomic - at least that's the way it looks with both featured desks.
Better would've been to have the "pod" thingy sit lower than the keyboard, and disallowing some of the computer's range of motion to enforce good ergonomics. Frankly I've never been taken with Apple's designs - they make their products look like candy with all its good *and* bad associations, detracting from the quality of their products in some peoples' minds.
Gods forbid if you should have kids/pets running around with that standing model - they both look really unstable and flimsy. Maybe they should contact the people at Bang & Olufsen instead of Yul Ullu.
It reminds me of the struggle between bacteria and antibiotics - ineffective (or non-existent) laws, poor user understanding, and overly-simple anti-spam software might contribute to highly resistant strains of spam at some point. Either that or we'll end up getting rid of spam by simply getting rid of email altogether.
I'd love to see the details of how much of the final pricetags of each company broke down into software versus training and support. Something tells me that the ratio of software licenses to training/support for each side would skew in two very different directions between MS and the Linux solution.
If I were making the decision, I'd pay close attention to that ratio (and I'm assuming Munich did). Software licenses are fairly transitory - they expire, the software needs upgrading, etc. whereas training and support seem more solid investments in the workforce and infrastructure.
My question is, will the strategy of selling to a declining population (as people leave AOL for other Internet providers) be worth it in the long run? Sure, AOL/TW can make money off their subscribers this way, but, as someone previously posted, when AOL users' anxiety over the Internet drops to the point where they look elsewhere for service, AOL/TW loses that potential sales channel completely.
I don't think AOL is going away anytime soon, but unless AOL is also going to pursue an *outside* channel of sales (one that non-AOL subscribers can get in on) as well, the strategy only makes sense in the short term. I'd guess that there's something larger in the AOL/TW works, and this announcement is the equivalent of "open beta".
Maybe I didn't make it clear what was predatory about closed-source companies. What companies like MS do is create their software such that they make choices for the business by making interoperability much harder for IT departments.
A good example would be Exchange Server. If a company wants to use Outlook's calendar feature, the IT department has to choose Exchange so that calendars synch up, etc. MS benefits from both sales of Exchange Server and Outlook - while Outlook's functionality has been duplicated for the most part by companies like Ximian (Connector), the closed-source nature of Exchange Server itself makes the choice for the business.
From a business standpoint, I can understand why MS takes that tack - who wants competition when Lotus is pounding on the door. If I were a CIO of a company other than MS or IBM, though, I'd feel my choices of email/calendar server software were unfairly restricted (or at least hopelessly complicated) by that situation.
The choices are wider than that, of course, because there are OSS alternatives maturing in places like SourceForge, but conservative businesses like banks want fully-matured solutions. OSS, in my view, has a way to go before shaking off business' view of it as done by "hackers", sadly.
As for adding value, I'd offer that the OSS focus on standards is itself an added value to the duplicated software. With industry standards being set, I as a CIO could choose a Linux-based Exchange alternative, and, if I found Outlook to be my email client of choice, I could buy it. As it stands now, though, I find my company (which isn't in the software dev business) has one of three solutions: 1) buy only Microsoft, 2) buy MS and cobble together OSS solutions, working harder than I should to keep them talking or 3) go strictly OSS which has its own set of issues. As a businessperson, I'm not content with those choices.
Sorry about the Amy Wong reference - had Futurama on in the background.
After reading the article, I remembered all those times PM mentors would expound on the idea, "separate business logic from programming logic", which is essentially what O'Reilly (and others) are saying. Companies like Google, Amazon, et al. are creating proprietary "business logic" on Open Source "programming logic".
Frankly, I think this commoditization of the "programming logic" part is inevitable as businesses look for the most efficient framework in which to please customers and make money for their shareholders. Businesses are starting to wake up to some new freedoms they didn't know they had in Open Source, and the focus of the competition is shifting (rightly) to the *products* a software developer creates rather than the tools they use to create them.
Closed-source companies prey on the absence of interoperability standards, but I can't see that lasting forever - businesses will *require* more from their software dev companies from fidiuciary responsibility if anything else, not wanting to be tied to a single company for fear of out-of-control pricing.